Four Quick Takes (Episodes 82, 83, 85, & 88)

82 Hostage Rescue Operation: Daddio

I hate evil and love justice,
I am a man among men!
Lupin loves evil and hates justice,
He is a man among men!



Although we’ve seen Zenigata worked up about Lupin’s fate, until now we haven’t quite had the reverse. Despite the captive Zenigata’s defiant yell to his captors above, the two are not quite two sides of the same coin, or at least they aren’t here. Zenigata’s overconfidence in his own abilities gets him captured by terrorists, which leads Lupin to lead a rescue operation on behalf of ICPO. And there’s no quid pro quo involved (as in Fujiko’s previous deals—it’s all because Lupin doesn’t think thieving will have any appeal without a chase.

That’s a bit of a paradox, given that this is one of the more incompetent Zenigata characterizations, but it’s still nice.



The Bonapartiste raid is exciting—and for once the opponents are shooting to kill—but more interesting is who kidnaps Zenigata. Of all the political possible orientations we get Bonapartistes! Bonapartistes are real—and harmless since the nineteenth century (and frankly if I were party to one of les droites en France I’d probably be a Bonapartiste)—but it’s fun to see the activist version, complete with modernized Napoleonic duds. They’re trying to get the current Napoleon heir, who obviously has a history of hatching violent takeover attempts (and wants to reestablish some semblance of Napoleon’s empire, too), out of INTERPOL’s underground prison facilities.

This leads up to another one of those Lupin-meets-a-surrogate-historical figure encounters, this time with a Napoleon who looks like his ancestor en route to St. Helena (or the cookie jar). And there’s a gimmick with him, too—unlike Napoleon I, who was rumored to sleep three hours a day, his descendent can only keep himself awake for three hours a day, so he much prefers his gilded cage to his old dream of world conquest.



It’s thin stuff, mainly enlivened, in my case, by my love for Bonapartist trivia and, in everyone else’s case, the care with which this episode was made. Telecom was the contracted animation studio and their superior craftsmanship pays off here—the action is good, and even minor movements—such as Zenigata falling to the ground in tears—is animated with an expert naturalness that makes this episode flow a little better.

Recommended?
•  While I enjoyed this most French of Lupin episodes, it’s probably closer to inessential than good—God is in the details of this one, but unless Radical Bonapartisme is your thing there’s nothing really special here.

Stray Observations
•  One of the reasons for the lateness of this review is because I was visiting family, one of whom is back in the States after her annual months in France. The first picture she showed me was of Napoleon’s furniture from St. Helena on display in Les Invalides, which gives you a picture of the sort of people the de Lemurs are and why this one appeals to me.

•  The title isn’t a super-direct translation—wikipedia gives me “The Old Man Rescue Operation”—but it’s an actual interpretation of the original title and not some new pun, so there’s that. Sometimes I see “Daddio” as an alternative for “Pops”—I definitely prefer the latter.

•  Goemon has a little spiel about how Zenigata will die honorably because he’s Japanese. I’ve had enough of your Klingon bullshit, Goemon.

• We get another trip to INTERPOL’s subterranean prison, last seen in The Sweet Trap of ICPO.

•  We have Lupin remark that “In Lupin III’s dictionary, there is no entry for ‘impossible.’” This is a reference to the saying about Napoleon’s dictionary, which is a clever little joke here but was later extended to a full-length TV special in 1991 (unfortunately it’s infamously bad).

•  I believe Leblanc’s Lupin was of Napoleonic stock, meaning that our Lupin and this episode’s Napoleon may well have been distant cousins.



•  From now on our episodes will only be ones available for streaming on crunchyroll. I first saw this episode via a rip from an old DVD edition and the effects of the more recent, higher-definition restoration are very noticeable, with more vibrant color all around. There’s also been a bit of over-restoration—the wine bottle’s “Camus” marking has been scraped away, apparently by restorers who didn’t see that this was an absurdist reference rather than a trademark infringement.

•  We get another bit of watch fetishism with Jigen’s Rolex Submariner.

83 Lupin in the Wild West



I watched this one on a whim after re-watching “Hostage Rescue Operation: Daddio,” in large part because the basic outline given in the preview reminded me a bit of the finale of Archer—death on a movie set. There’s no larger conspiracy here, though—the aim of the villains is to make a snuff western featuring Lupin as an advertisement for their assassination service.

It’s more than a bit silly, but to my surprise this is actually something of a comedic gem in the Looney Tunes mold, but with the twist of Lupin being both Roadrunner, pursued by the assassins, and Coyote, pursuing Fujiko, who’s the lure for Lupin. There’s not much that lends itself to written review, but the appearances of others in the gang are great, the action is tight, the references are well-executed, and it’s all-around a fun trifle.

Recommended?
Yes—good shallow fun.

Stray Observations
•  It’s interesting to compare this to the latest series, where Lupin’s very keep to protect himself from the universal surveillance of the twenty-first century (even when getting roped into a film role).

•  Lupin is lured to set by promise of a “love scene” with Fujiko. At first I thought this was the comparatively innocent, 1940s-style usage of the term (where there’s definite passion but no actual sex), but nope, it’s the last seventies and Lupin interprets “love scene” as, well, pornographic inserts. Oh, the seventies.

85 The Secret Order of ICPO



This one has a widespread—as as widespread as you can get in terms of the handful of lists of recommended Lupin episodes out there—recommendations as one of the gems of the second series. I’m afraid I have to disagree. It traffics a bit too far in pathetic Zenigata for my taste, though we do get a slight mix-up in that it’s due to infatuation this time. It’s all very thinly sketched, though, and not terribly funny to me. But where this episode does stand out, though, is in the cage where the Lupin gang is kept after their rescue from ICPO. It’s an impressive bit of animation and escaping said cage is a nice challenge.

Recommended
It’s a trifle which is half ingenious and half provoking hard eye-rolls. Inessential, but worth checking out for some of the animation if that interests you.

88 Lupin’s North Pole, South Pole Adventures



Although I said I’d swear off the sillier Lupin III Part II episodes, and this has a reputation as one of the silliest. But do you know what it also has? PENGUINS. Objections overruled—I’m all in. I love penguins. And it doesn’t hurt that the Japanese pronunciation of the word sounds a bit like someone’s coo-ing the word ‘penguin” in baby talk. THIS IS SO CUTE. I LOSE ALL OBJECTIVITY.

The story’s slight but well-constructed—it opens in a garden where Lupin’s lounging with a statue of himself holding the world, axes reversed. This doesn’t matter at all, of course (north being on top is mere convention), but Fujiko makes an off-hand joke about the PENGUINS and Lupin springs into action—he’ll relocate a population of penguins to the North Pole and win a Nobel Peace Prize for services to ecology (Fujiko, true to herself, asks how much money comes with a Nobel Prize—not the point, Fujiko!).

Of course the globe—both in positioning and in the mysterious red coloring of the Italian peninsula—contains a clue to Lupin’s primary scheme for the episode, recovering a treasure left on the North Pole by the Italian fascists. It’s an impressive deep cut in polar exploration, referencing Umberto Nobile’s airship voyages in the 1920s. Fujiko finds out as well and recruits a radical Italian group (they seem Communist but are after fascist mementos, plus are well-funded enough to have their own submarine, so it’s hard to say where they lie). The two groups have a confrontation in the pole, and the penguin plot unites with the search for fascist treasure.



It’s all very silly, but well-made nonetheless. One of the strengths of this episode is that it keeps itself wrapped under a veneer of one of the more straightforward treasure searches, which keeps a lot of the humor from being too high-pitched and lends the story a structure that a lot of the more comedic Lupin III Part II episodes lack. It also looks very good—the restoration serves this episode better, allowing the both the warm blues and fuchsias of the polar skies and the bright, preppy colors of Lupin and Fujiko’s attire in this episode to stand out (I’ve been looking at a lot of old Polo ads lately so this has double the appeal to me).

Recommended?
Yes—here’s another well-made trifle, silly but surprisingly smart and well-constructed.

Stray Observations
•  Today in Goemon’s Klingon bullshit: he wears his samurai duds in the Arctic and Antarctic because the sensations of warmth and cool are all in the mind.
•  We get a rare bit of meta when Jigen and Goemon tell Lupin, after he’s shot down, that they’ll see him at the same time next week.
•  Although she’s displayed a preference for then-contemporary British roadsters (a TR7 in “Where are the Peking man’s bones?” and an MG in “A Bridal Gown Doesn’t Suit Fujiko”) or, looking beyond this series, Minis (in “The Great Gold Battle” and The Mystery of Mamo), but here she drives a Citroën 2CV, which she drives in at least one other episode (80 “The Last Meal is Cup Ramen,” which is fine but inessential). While such a peasant car is a bit of an odd choice for Fujiko, by the seventies the 2CV was something of a fashion statement. It’s still a bit on the hippie-ish side for Fujiko, but I guess that’s fitting given her concern for the penguins here.



•  I love the character on the man on the right’s face—another example of how the success or failure of a Lupin episode tends extend to its details.

Next week we “Play the Thief’s Symphony” (89) and try to enjoy “Lupin’s Gourmet Heaven” (96) and, in an unfortunate one-week miss for Father’s Day, celebrate “The Day without Daddio” (98).